Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 15th May, 2013 -- Today, the rasdaman Big Data engine received the Geospatial World Innovation Award. The award is conferred annually by Geospatial Media and Communications for developing innovative geospatial tools and products. Experts selected the German open-source technology for its performance, flexibility, and support of open standards.

The Geospatial World Forum is a premier event for the global geospatial community showcasing state-of-the-art technology and its utility in the world economy. Each year, three innovations are scouted. An international expert panel selects the winners out of 263 applications from all over the world. In 2013, the winners are rasdaman (Germany), Visual Intelligence LLP. (USA) and RIEGL LMS GmbH (Austria).

In a gala ceremony at the event, which was attended by 1,200 visitors from 80 nations, the trophies were presented. Rasdaman was honored for Image Data Management and Processing. This open-source project was established in a series of European funded projects; currently, rasdaman is the platform technology of the transatlantic EarthServer? initiative which enables science data centers like NASA and ESA with Big Earth Data Analytics. Therefore, the recognition went jointly to the rasdaman project team and the European Commission.

Professor Hrishikesh Samant from India conferred the trophy to Wim Jansen, European Commission, and Dr. Peter Baumann, Professor at Jacobs University and CEO of rasdaman GmbH. The rasdaman project was acknowledged as "high-performance Big Data Analytics engine which supports flexible and fast ad-hoc retrieval of massive multi-dimensional raster data, leading to a democratization of data and increased availability on all levels. This in turn allows researchers gaining new insights, companies establishing new business models, and governments improving citizen information", said Samant in his laudation.